The Weight of Feathers

But the whispers from the other side of town stilled her. The wind carried the call of reed pipes. River kelp wrapped around her, pulling her down. It would take her under until water filled her, and she did not breathe. Those voices whispered their assurances. Better you drown than touch him.

So she didn’t touch his cheek like she meant to. Didn’t follow the shape of his temple down to his jawline. She took a lock of his hair between her fingers. It felt slick as the barbs of a feather, smooth, ready for rain. He shut his eyes as though he felt it, like the blue-black of his hair was living, as full of blood and nerves as his skin.

His look toward her mouth was quick, like she might not notice if he was fast enough. Then he lifted his eyes back up to hers. Even in daylight, his irises made her think of wet earth.

“Sorry about your postcards,” he said.

“It’s okay,” she said. “If it’s windy enough, maybe they’ll get where they’re going.”

She tilted her head enough to tell him she wanted it, but didn’t move so much that those voices could say she started it. He was close enough that she could have traced his lower lip with her tongue.

The sound of laughing came from the back of the house, and he broke away. He raised his head, looking past Lace out the truck window. He mumbled something that may or may not have been French, and got out on the driver’s side.

Lace glanced around the truck. The laughing wasn’t close enough to be at them. She jumped down from the cab and went after him.

Dax and a couple of the other Corbeau men clustered behind a trailer. Cluck joined them, his back to Lace. Even through his shirt, she could make out the tension in his shoulders.

Cluck shifted his weight, and Lace saw the thing in Dax’s hands. She stopped, and her feet skidded against the ground.

She knew those scraps of beaded fabric as well as her own body. The small stitches. The bursts of glass beads. Her old tail, the grapefruit pink now dulled to peach. The current must have pulled it loose from that ball of roots. The silt and river water had left it dirty, drying stiff.

Something deep red had splattered it. The color, close to new blood, pressed into Lace’s collarbone. Then she saw the jar of blackberry jam, dark as wine, in a cousin’s hands.

Dax holding her old tail made her feel his hands on her lower back, her hips, her thighs. Everywhere Cluck had touched cooled, leaving room for the pinch of Dax’s grip.

“What the hell are you doing?” Cluck asked.

“What does it look like?” Dax asked. “We’re gonna make a delivery.”

“Where did you get this?” Cluck grabbed the fin, balling it in his hands. The sense of his fingers on Lace’s ankle, while Dax still held the rest of her, almost made her kneel.

“It washed up,” said one of the cousins, flicking more of the blackberry jam over the fabric. “One of the fish must’ve lost it.” Red stained his fingers, and Dax’s. It stained all their hands.

Lace had made her peace with losing that tail to the river. The water would swallow it and keep it. Like a communion hostia, it would dissolve on the current’s tongue.

But now the Corbeaus had it.

If she saved it from their hands, they’d know, and she’d have to run. The feather burn would stay on her forever, this family’s hate searing it deeper into her skin.

If she did nothing, they would stain it, leave it outside the motel for Abuela or Martha or worse, her great-aunt, whose skilled, tired hands had worked so many nights to make it. Tía Lora would take it as a sign that Lace had died or would soon.

The one with the jar held it out to Cluck, offering him a turn.

Cluck stood close to his brother. “Stop.”

Dax laughed and splashed a little more blackberry jam on the tail. Lace felt it, sharp as cuts.

Cluck ripped the tail out of Dax’s hands. Flecks of red sprayed both their shirts.

The cousins froze. One stepped back.